Folks,
I was somewhat tempted to skip this one altogether, for there was hardly anything much of note to it. I am not interested in the ludicrous scenes of our pita li ladli teasing her rotund bhabhi and thus reaffirming her chulbuli, natkhat aur nadaan credentials. Nor in recounting how Padmanand was hauled over the coals, metaphorically speaking, by both the pesky women in his life: his Maharani Avantika, and the once Maharani of Piplivan, Mura, who is now like a burr that lacerates him but he is not able to shake off either.
Though I must say that I loved Mura's glad-eyed vindictiveness, and the laughing gusto with which she ladles verbal vitriol over him, as he stands there, crippled by a loss that has, temporarily, made him a hollow man.
The Great Chemistry Hunt: To revert, I have been subjected elsewhere in this forum to so much of anticipatory froth about the "chemistry" between our lead pair, already dubbed as "passion" and analysed with the minute exactitude worthy of a delicate scientific experiment in, what else, chemistry,š that I felt it was time I added my tuppence worth to the mix. This is it.
There is, as of now , NO chemistry between Chandragupta and Nandini. It will undoubtedly germinate, and bloom luxuriantly, in its own proper time. But that time is not just yet.
Efforts to locate any of this will o'the wisp prematurely - even with all the grim determination usually seen in archeological expeditions looking for another bejeweled pharaonic mummy to rival that of King Tutankhamenš - are, for the present , bound to end up as exercises in self-delusion. A mrigtrishna, a mirage.
This is hardly surprising. One cannot insist that two young people at loggerheads with each other, and not without reason, should be also teetering on the edge of falling on each other's necks!
There is anger, yes, on both sides, and for valid reasons, though he is mistaken in attributing his being exposed solely to Nandini's detective propensities. Moreover, she is not only the coddled daughter of the man he has hated for years, but she has also shown herself to be, to his mind, unnecessarily devious in hiding her identity and fooling him with her daasi vesh.
As for her, she is not just furious at her family having been fooled by this interloper, but also, and perhaps even more so, at her having been rejected, deliberately and insolently, by the selfsame bahuroopiya.
Economy of expression : I have, at this point, a confession to make. I was mistaken when I wrote in my last post that Nandini, on sighting the escapee in the anthahpura, looked terrified. She does not. She apparently meant to project intense anger, but since she opens her eyes to their full width for a whole range of emotions, my mistake was perhaps pardonable.š
In fact, she looks pretty much the same then, later when she has knocked both of them off the horse, then after she has taken a bit of skin and probably flesh too off Chandragupta's hand, and finally when he is astride his horse, and is looking at her with the faintest trace of a smug smile before riding off. The only extra she bothers to tack on to the afore-mentioned wide-eyed stare is a tic, of pressing down on her lower lip. This too is a staple.
Methinks Swetha must be a classical dancer. On the stage, the dancer has to project emotions with great emphasis, so that the facial expressions are visible even from the last rows of the theatre. But if the same OTT style is adopted in cinema, the results are bound to look forced. Which is what her attempt at projecting the roudhra rasa after that tumble off the horse looked like, with eyes looking as if they had been forced open and clamped in position.
No nuances were to be seen thereafter either. That was not only because the young man - whose thoughtful gesture of saving her from that wimpish lizard she had reciprocated with a solid slap (now that was well executed, full of vim and vigour, and with an excellent forearm swing and follow up actionš) - had unleashed some primitive rage of his own, and was squeezing her jaw as hard as he could, not letting go even after she had sunk her pearly whites into the crook of his palm. As of now, apni Nandini is like that only, she believes in a decided economy of expression. š
Natural reactions: And no, nothing of what she does all thru the episode, from rushing at him in the anthahpura to biting him a an attempt to get free, has anything to do with any wild passion for this bahuroopiya burgeoning inside her all unbeknownst to herself. It is all exactly what any young girl who is not a wilting lily would have done under the prevailing circumstances, right down to trying to take a chunk off the chap who seems bent on dislocating her jaw. š
One more point. I see that some here have been blaming Nandini for not having managed to free herself even before they rode out of the palace gates; she is a fighter, they insist, for whom this should have been a chutki ki baat, but she had fallen down on the job. This is illogical. Nandini is good at fencing and archery, but that does not make her a pro at jijutsu, which is what she would have needed to get out her captor's iron grip.
Silent smouldering: As for Chandragupta, he is oscillating between undoubted satisfaction at his having pulled off a daring escape regardless of the machinations of this harpy he has been forced to lug along, and irritation at her successful efforts to unseat them both. Besides, he is totally unfamiliar with young women, and is unsure of how to handle this wildcat he has been saddled with. For she displays her feline traits even before she bites him!
Kya museebat mol liya hai maine! Iska abhi ky karein? , he must be muttering to himself, as he considers her with barely veiled irritation in his now almost coal black eyes. There is no real anger in them, for he now feels on top in the game he has been playing, having forced the Magadha Samrat and all his minions to stand by helplessly while he rode off with his khul jaa sim sim talisman of a princess.
He says nothing because he cannot think of anything to the point to say, and in any case, he is not given to speaking much, indeed not at all if he can help it.
I do not know why he pulls the dupatta off to dislodge the lizard, but it was probably the sort of thing he would have done with a boy, and he is not well versed in the niceties governing dealings with unfamiliar young women. Which is why the unmerited slap angers him so much, and almost calls forth a counter slap. He remembers the stree par prahaar varjit hai just in time, but he is now not of a mind, after all she has done to trip him up since their duel under more benign circumstances, to let her go scot free. So he adopts a median line and squeezes her mouth and jaw shut with savage retaliatory force.
Soon, this becomes less of a payback for her behaviour and more of a preventive measure, as he hears the sound of the horses of the posse that he realises is after them. He has to keep her from yelling and alerting them before he is ready.
So he presses even harder, and not even the bite makes him relax his hold on her jaw in the slightest. In fact, the pain of it does not even seem to register with him, so intent is he on the sounds of the search party, and on thinking out his next moves.
When he has thought them thru, he junks this tiresome pest of a female with a hard shove that sends her reeling, while he gets ready to scale the rocky outcrop and activate his plan of escape.
Chemistry? Kahaan? In all of this, there is not even a smidgen of any kind of attraction in him towards the girl - physical, mental, emotional, whatever. How could there be , in this situation? He looks at her as if she was a tiresome imposition, plus an unpredictable wildcat he has to keep a wary eye on all the time, not as if she was someone he was falling for. š
And in any case, all this is unknown territory for Chandragupta, who is not going to be swept away by the budding of the divine passion just because he has received a solid bite!
Nor does he lick off the bite because he is somehow intoxicated by this commingling of their concerned bodily fluidsš. Boys lick away all sorts of wounds, from cuts to bruises, that they acquire while playing or fighting or whatever, and their standard operating procedure is to rub the wound with dust and saliva.
As for the very faint smile on his face when he is astride the horse and is about to ride off, it says only one thing. You can rave and rant all you want, you jungli billi, and your precious father as well, but I will get my own back regardless. So watch out! While Nandini stands there in impotent anger, huffing and puffing like a tea kettle on the gas ring. š
So, sorry, all the incurable romantics and passion-seekers in the forum, but to me at least, the Chandragupta-Nandini chemistry column is, right now, a blank. I am sure , however, that if you all hang in there and possess your collective souls in patience, the green liquid in the retort will start bubbling and boiling in due course, and will also change colour to a rich red, the colour of, what else, passion!!š
The real chemistry: This is not the one between Chandragupta and Nandini, but between the shishya and his guru. Between Chandragupta and Chanakya.
They do not need words to communicate , nor do they need to explain anything to each other. They are almost symbiotic, united in an instinctive, mute understanding that is far stronger than any verbalization. And there is an emotional bond between them that has grown and taken root, all of Chanakya's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. This is evident in so many ways.
As Malayaketu is complaining about Chandragupta, Chanakya is walking up and down the room at a phenomenal pace. He, normally so phlegmatic and unmoved by any disaster, is now clearly on edge, because he is deeply worried about Chandragupta. Not just about his success or failure in his mission but about the deadly danger he must have been in after having been, as Malayaketu's tirade makes clear, exposed as a fraud.
Again, as Chandragupta, having quietly waited till Malayaketu is well and truly gone, raises his eyes, for once, to those of his mentor, proffers the map of the Pataliputra palace that he has prepared, and then lowers his eyes once more, Chanakya's expression is a study.
His face and his eyes are aglow with so much pride and so much vatsalya for this boy wonder of his that no one, having seen him at that moment, could ever say henceforth that for Chanakya, Chandragupta is just a peerless weapon with which to fulfil his plans, and nothing more. He loves this boy, whom he has nurtured and shaped, like the son he would have wanted to have. And by now, Chandragupta knows this too.
That explains how he, despite his total samarpan to his mentor, does not hesitate to voice the disappointment he feels when the precious maanchitra - which he has prepared with so much effort and after running so many deadly risks - is first declared to be now useless, and is then reduced to ashes by Chanakya. It is equally noteworthy that the guru does not shut him up by demanding unquestioning obedience. He explains the reason why the plan has now been overtaken by events thanks to Amatya Rakshas, and also that it cannot be allowed to lie around and perhaps fall into the wrong hands.
The two of them, mentor and pupil, are now a perfectly attuned, smoothly working team. So when he is informed that their next move would be to contact Raja Purushottam , aka Porus, of the Pauravas (whose kingdom of Kekeya lay between the Jhelum and the Chenab rivers), Chandragupta has no questions. He immediately starts internalizing this new information, and behind his lowered brows, one can practically see the wheels of his brain starting to rev up.
The precap seems to hint at a plan of Chanakya's to kidnap Nandini, whom Chandragupta will of course identify as Padmanand's Achilles heel. He very likely intends to use her to neutralize Padmanand, and force him to go to war with the Macedonians, or to at least block their eastwards march, while he tries to do the same in the northwest thru Purushottam.
A curious point: Chanakya tells Malayaketu that he cannot leave for Pataliputra because there are still four months to go for his deeksha at the end of his studies in the gurukul. When he is complaining vociferously to Chanakya about Chandragupta's perfidy in stealing the invitation to the swayamwar, he says that this was his last day there, ie in the gurukul. It is then that Chandragupta arrives.
This means that for once, the to and fro journey from Takshashila to Pataliputra and back is shown as taking a realistic 4 months.
Misplaced criticism: This was for, as the folks concerned assumed, having shown only 6 soldiers sent by Padmanand and his army commander Vakranaas for running down Chandragupta and rescuing Nandini. But this was only one of the many such posses that must have been despatched, for the pursuers had no idea in which direction Chandragupta had gone after crossing the drawbridge over the palace moat.
I do wish, however, that Chandragupta had had a sword, and had had to fight his way out of a much larger group of pursuers, a la Jalal's escape from the Amer jail with the crippled Abdul in tow. Now that was one terrific scene, and this would have been just as thrilling! But the CVs here seem fixated on these silly VFX stunts, as at Chandragupta's entry and now here.š”
OK, folks, this is it for now. Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think that is warranted.
One more thing. I find that I simply cannot manage these daily episode analyses any more. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is, alas, weak! With my rheumatoid arthritis, I cannot cope with the amount of typing, nor can I spare the amount of time - over 6 hours daily - needed for me not just to write these analyses - which is the easier part - but to respond to all the comments. I am falling further and further behind with the latter, and feeling more and more guilty about it. In fact, I feel as if I am on a treadmill that is going faster and faster as I struggle to keep pace with it and not fall off. It is clearly time to for a change if I am to sustain this exercise.
So, from this week, I propose to do biweekly analyses, on Wednesdays and on Saturdays. This should be more manageable for me. I hope this will be OK with you as well.
So, see you all again next Wednesday, folks. Hasta la vista!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
